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What are the must-use applications on Avalanche? When I first paid for dial-up Internet in 1993, it was pre-web, just clunky text-mode telnet, but the apps wer

by pavlov 4y ago

What are the must-use applications on Avalanche? When I first paid for dial-up Internet in 1993, it was pre-web, just clunky text-mode telnet, but the apps were obviously attractive: IRC, email, Usenet, ftp. Talk to anyone in the world, download latest stuff for free! Same with www a few years later. The dot-com business schemes may have been harebrained but the underlying protocol’s usage was growing exponentially because people couldn’t get enough of the things you could find on the web. What’s the thing on Avalanche that would keep me coming back every day, like dial-up Internet and web did?

ertian 4y ago
I suspect we're not really at the equivalent of 1993. We may still be back in the early 80s, with people exchanging bang paths and oohing and ahhing when an email goes through. 'Real' applications are thin on the ground, largely driven by novelty, and not particularly visible to the public. In most cases, wide-area networks can't compete with a phone call or a station wagon full of floppy disks. There's a bunch of competing approaches; it's not clear which will win, and surely most will fail, but all have devoted adherents. The important standards and protocols may still be in the future, or are obscured by piles of false leads, mistakes, and outright scams. The thing is, we now exist in a post-internet environment where people are well aware of the transformative ability of technology. They're all looking for the Next Big Thing in a way that people just weren't in the 70s and 80s. The population of the world has doubled, and the share of those people who are trying to keep up with the cutting edge is _vastly_ higher. On top of that we're talking about a network of value, i.e. money, and so there's inherently money to be made--and it's accessible to the average Joe. All together, you've got the recipe for a blizzard of hype and excitement that obscures the real innovations that underlie it all. And that's unavoidable. Any exciting new technology with the potential to have a serious impact on society is inevitably going to trigger a blizzard of hype--and an equivalent blizzard of skepticism. That makes the whole process exhausting. Par for the course in 2022.
- pavlov 4y ago
  A lot of 1980s hype technologies fizzled out. Take CD-ROM, which enjoyed crypto-level multi-year hype before anyone even had a player. None of the companies that invested heavily in CD-ROM were winners. We’re not enjoying our multimedia entertainment on platforms provided by Philips and Sega and Sierra On-Line. There were no Googles or Amazons arising from that massive tech hype cycle. In twenty years, the notion of “I’ll store value using my cryptocurrency wallet” may sound as anachronistic and outdated as “I’ll enjoy a night home browsing hot multimedia content on a Philips CDi disc.”
  - ertian 4y ago
    I mean, I disagree...I think cryptocurrency is more analogous to packet routing than to some specific piece of media. CD-ROMs in particular were an evolution of physical media that had been around for a century (vinyl record, 8-track, tape, etc) and failed to anticipate the fact that the internet would render them all obsolete (or, to be fair, provided an important bridge between floppy disks and high-speed internet, CD-ROMs were the default for a decade). I'd say they're more analogous to the kludgy way we perform online transactions today, which is complex, country-specific, and crowded by intermediaries. I do agree "I'll store value using my cryptocurrency wallet" will sound anachronistic, in the same way "I'm going to dial in and log on to my service provider so I can surf the internet superhighway!" sounds quaint today. It'll just be: duh, how else would you do it? With a visa card?
  - sanderjd 4y ago
    Love this analogy! I've had trouble thinking of things that were "the next big thing" and then fizzled out entirely. This is an excellent example of one!
  - matthewdgreen 4y ago
    >Take CD-ROM, which enjoyed crypto-level multi-year hype before anyone even had a player. Multimedia-enabled applications have been a huge success: it's just that the cost/value curve didn't become a winner until we had the Internet.
  - JohnHaugeland 4y ago
    The utility of the internet was obvious in its first year. Bitcoin is in year 14, and emits enough pollution to be a top 20 nation. How many years will you wait?

by pavlov 4y ago

ertian 4y ago

I suspect we're not really at the equivalent of 1993. We may still be back in the early 80s, with people exchanging bang paths and oohing and ahhing when an email goes through. 'Real' applications are thin on the ground, largely driven by novelty, and not particularly visible to the public. In most cases, wide-area networks can't compete with a phone call or a station wagon full of floppy disks. There's a bunch of competing approaches; it's not clear which will win, and surely most will fail, but all have devoted adherents. The important standards and protocols may still be in the future, or are obscured by piles of false leads, mistakes, and outright scams. The thing is, we now exist in a post-internet environment where people are well aware of the transformative ability of technology. They're all looking for the Next Big Thing in a way that people just weren't in the 70s and 80s. The population of the world has doubled, and the share of those people who are trying to keep up with the cutting edge is _vastly_ higher. On top of that we're talking about a network of value, i.e. money, and so there's inherently money to be made--and it's accessible to the average Joe. All together, you've got the recipe for a blizzard of hype and excitement that obscures the real innovations that underlie it all. And that's unavoidable. Any exciting new technology with the potential to have a serious impact on society is inevitably going to trigger a blizzard of hype--and an equivalent blizzard of skepticism. That makes the whole process exhausting. Par for the course in 2022.

pavlov 4y ago
A lot of 1980s hype technologies fizzled out. Take CD-ROM, which enjoyed crypto-level multi-year hype before anyone even had a player. None of the companies that invested heavily in CD-ROM were winners. We’re not enjoying our multimedia entertainment on platforms provided by Philips and Sega and Sierra On-Line. There were no Googles or Amazons arising from that massive tech hype cycle. In twenty years, the notion of “I’ll store value using my cryptocurrency wallet” may sound as anachronistic and outdated as “I’ll enjoy a night home browsing hot multimedia content on a Philips CDi disc.”
- ertian 4y ago
  I mean, I disagree...I think cryptocurrency is more analogous to packet routing than to some specific piece of media. CD-ROMs in particular were an evolution of physical media that had been around for a century (vinyl record, 8-track, tape, etc) and failed to anticipate the fact that the internet would render them all obsolete (or, to be fair, provided an important bridge between floppy disks and high-speed internet, CD-ROMs were the default for a decade). I'd say they're more analogous to the kludgy way we perform online transactions today, which is complex, country-specific, and crowded by intermediaries. I do agree "I'll store value using my cryptocurrency wallet" will sound anachronistic, in the same way "I'm going to dial in and log on to my service provider so I can surf the internet superhighway!" sounds quaint today. It'll just be: duh, how else would you do it? With a visa card?
- sanderjd 4y ago
  Love this analogy! I've had trouble thinking of things that were "the next big thing" and then fizzled out entirely. This is an excellent example of one!
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  >Take CD-ROM, which enjoyed crypto-level multi-year hype before anyone even had a player. Multimedia-enabled applications have been a huge success: it's just that the cost/value curve didn't become a winner until we had the Internet.
- JohnHaugeland 4y ago
  The utility of the internet was obvious in its first year. Bitcoin is in year 14, and emits enough pollution to be a top 20 nation. How many years will you wait?